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* Except if you're making use of tmpfs, which is listed as cache, but cannot be freed on demand.

Hm, a few days ago I had high memory usage that free showed as cache, but I didn't find it anywhere in any of my tmpfs mounts and going to rescue.target cleared it. I just had the thought that maybe there were files in a tmpfs that got marked deleted so I didn't see them... As long as a process has it open / a link in /proc/pid/fd/, it will still be displayed as cached, right?

I've disabled cpufreq completely in the kernel and my CPU still clocks down and up as needed according to load (i5 2500K). It also seems to clock in-between. With slight load, it won't go to max, but for example only to 2Ghz.

So what's the cpufreq driver good for anyway? Especially with the on-demand governor. The chip seems to do this on its own anyway.

It actually does a pretty good job for normal multitasking loads, but I want more control for intensive, multi-threaded applications (like video transcoding with HandBrakeCLI). indicator-cpufreq seems capable of interacting with it, and shows two options: powersave and performance (although clicking on one does not remove the selection bullet from the other...).
Performance ramps up a little more quickly than powersave, perhaps, but I can't really see much difference between the two. Powersave does not limit the cpu; under load my CPU will (eventually) reach top speed and critical temperatures.

The overheating takes more time than with ondemand's "performance" or "conservative" options, but the ondemand driver could limit the cpu to a specific speed so as to continue demanding tasks over a longer time. With the p-states driver, I have to give up on certain tasks or seriously improve my cooling situation.

It actually does a pretty good job for normal multitasking loads, but I want more control for intensive, multi-threaded applications (like video transcoding with HandBrakeCLI). indicator-cpufreq seems capable of interacting with it, and shows two options: powersave and performance (although clicking on one does not remove the selection bullet from the other...).
Performance ramps up a little more quickly than powersave, perhaps, but I can't really see much difference between the two. Powersave does not limit the cpu; under load my CPU will (eventually) reach top speed and critical temperatures.

The overheating takes more time than with ondemand's "performance" or "conservative" options, but the ondemand driver could limit the cpu to a specific speed so as to continue demanding tasks over a longer time. With the p-states driver, I have to give up on certain tasks or seriously improve my cooling situation.

You should never have to rely on a cpufreq governor to prevent overheating. This is not their purpose.
Sounds like you have a serious cooling issue.

Yes/No, I have an environment problem. My i2 2700K is overclocked to 4.8Ghz in turbo, which is fine for moderate amounts of time because the system is liquid cooled. Unfortunately, liquid cooling has limitations, like ambient room temperature. I don't have air conditioning, so in the summer my apartment gets up to 40°C, at which point cooling fails. On the really hot days, rather than reconfigure overclocking in BIOS, I just set a temporary limit with the governor. This may not be possible with the p-states driver.

Its a pity Ubuntu 13.10 disabled pstate due to some complaints on Launchpad but which were not substantiated.Although it can be enabled via kernel adding intel_pstate=enable. Pstate runs far better and the system response is very good, combine that with Thermal Daemon from Intel and the temps are kept very nicely under control. I use this on Manjaro currently with kernel 3.11 on a Intel i7 laptop and I find the system response to be excellent with pstate as compared to ondemand.